September 2012: Focus Competition Results

September 2012: Focus Competition Results

Understanding The Basics of SLR Photography

Understanding the basics of slr photography is not as awkward as it feels. Imagine the digital camera as a box that lets in lighting. On that box is a sequence of various controls. These controls enable you to let a lot or a modest amount of light in. The quantity of light coming in may ascertain how you obtain your photo.

Let's start with the auto function. The auto mode allows the camera to make the judgements for you. This allows you to just focus on taking the photo rather than worrying about the settings. The automatic setting is straightforward however it is not most ideal.

The basics of digital SLR photography are painless to learn when you appreciate how the camera controls lighting. Camera has control over the light two chief ways; Aperture and shutter speed. Your aperture is the opening in which you let your light in. Your shutter speed is how you organize the speed at which the lighting is coming in. You need both to be able to monitor the lighting.

Think of the camera as a human eye. Your aperture is the iris that lets light in and reduces so that light won't come in. The shutter speed is like the blinking eyelid. Your aperture is also known as F stop. F-stop is a numeric value that tells you how much the iris is open. If the cameras aperture is pretty wide then we say that it is a large aperture. A large aperture is a small number. For example F2 .8 is a very large aperture. It means the aperture is open very wide. It is comparable to how the iris acts in low light. The iris will open more to let additional light in so that we can distinguish things in the dark. Your camera is the same.

Aperture not only controls how wide the iris is but it plays a necessary role to play in depth of field. Depth of field plainly means what part of the photo is in focus. If every single thing in the photo is in focus then we call that a long depth of field. If there is only a small part of the photo that is in focus we call this a short depth of field.

A photo that has a short depth of field means that only a small section of the subject is in focus.

A photo that has a long depth of field means that most, or all, of the photo is in focus. This is ideal for landscape photography.

When you have a wide aperture, F2 .8 for example, your depth of field can be short. If you have a small aperture such as F 22, then everything in image is in focus. (Light allowing of course.) I will explain this in a different article.

Shutter speed is intimately linked to time. Shutter speed is calculated in fractions of a second, seconds and then minutes. A number of cameras have a mode called “Bulb”. This will mean that the shutter stays wide open for as long as you keep it open. You can join a special cable to the digital camera and press it just the once. The shutter will open up. It will shut only when you compress the cable button. This will mean that you could have the shutter right open for an hour if your camera permitted.

Let's take for instance the evening sky. There is not much light at the human eye can notice. In this case we may want to leave the shutter open for 10 seconds or more. Then again if we want to take a photo of movement that is fast paced and "stop" the action, then we need to retain a very rapid shutter speed. This is where we get into fractions of a second. I have a Canon 5D Mark II and the shutter speed can go to 1/8000 of a second. This is super fast! I use a rapid shutter speed when I want to shoot the effect of water hanging in midair for example.

 A slow shutter might be anything from 1 second or more. The above photo was taken at 13 seconds so the camera could capture as much light as possible.

This photo was taken at 1/4000th of second. I wanted to create a "frozen in the air" photo. I could only do that if I had a super fast shutter speed.

You will see different shooting modes on your camera dial. Not only do you have the automatic function but you have aperture priority, shutter priority, manual and possibly extra. Aperture priority creates the aperture for you. It means the camera selects what f-stop to use and you choose the shutter speed. Shutter priority works the opposite. This will mean that that the camera chooses the shutter speed and you do the rest These two shooting modes are okay but you still won't get the ideal result. The best mode to use is manual.

When you employ the manual setting you have the most control over your digital camera. You can set the shutter speed and the aperture at the same time. Once you become comfortable with how the manual setting works then you can start to have more control over light. Once you have most control over the light that is when your pictures begin to look gorgeous.

Learning how to use your SLR is not a heavy or difficult process. It actually a lot of excitement and fairly simple when you get the hang of it. The basics of digital SLR photography purely rely on your camera's ability to interpret light. This of course will mean that that you have to comprehend light as well! Once you understand how light works through your camera you can then select the shutter speed and aperture that creates the photographs that you desire.

Once you master the basics of digital SLR photography you can then progress on to using tools to enhance your light. These tools can enhance and manipulate the appearance of light in your pictures. Using the flash is one such example of this. But I will leave this to another tutorial.

Your onboard light meter is a very imperative part of understanding light. Your internal light meter is a small indicator that you see when you look through the camera. When you place your dial on manual then the indicator will be more to the left or the right.

Based on what camera model you have the scale means there is too little or too much light. When the indicator is sitting in the center of the scale it means the camera thinks there is just the precise amount of light and you may confidently take the photo. To be proficient to master light effectively just start shooting in auto and write down the aperture and shutter speed that the camera has suggested. Then change your camera dial to manual and choose those same aperture and shutter speed settings. You will observe that those settings may not be the best ones that you once thought. Sometimes at those settings can create an image that is under exposed. This is why it is imperative to shoot using manual.

Learning how to use your SLR takes a bit training. The most ideal thing about digital photography is you can always remove the photos you don't want. Do not be fearful of making mistakes. Mistakes are catalysts for discovering new things. Once you realize how your camera interprets light then you will be free to become the skilled photographer you've always dreamed about.

Waterfall Photography Tips

August 2012: Focus Comp Results

 The winner of the August 2012 Focus Ezine Photography Competition has been announced!

Image copyright by Robin Tully.

Go here to see the results:

August 2012: Focus Comp Results

If you would like to take part in the competition then visit Focus Ezine 

Happy shooting!
Amy

I have updated my website- put a video on there now, what do you think?

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Waterfall Photography

Waterfall Photography

What Is Camera Raw?

Photo copyright by Amy Renfrey.

If you ever wondered if you should begin shooting in raw then the answer is yes. Raw photography offer us better quality and definition that Jpeg can't. Read the article on "what is camera raw" and never turn back!


Click on the link to discover: What Is Camera Raw?

Creating Sharp and Colourful Landscape Photography

Creating Sharp and Colourful Landscape Photography

How To Get Better Digital Photography Lighting- Introducing The Histogram

Recently I was asked by a subscriber of mine in New York State as to how he could improve his daylight digital photos to create a more even light across his digital photos. I suggested that in digital photography there were many tools such as a polariser, a Neutral Density Filter and some other fancy tools.

He said “I mean after the pictures has been taken. I really want my digital photography to turn out a lot better than what I am getting.”

What he was talking about was a digital photography method called post-editing. Post means “after” and editing…well you know what that means. And in digital photography as opposed to photography you can edit your photos so much easily than traditional film photography.
What I advised Grant was that he had a few options. He could try editing his digital photography images by increasing or decreasing the light values via the Histogram. The Histogram is probably one of your best friends in digital photography that you could ask for as far as post editing goes. In a nutshell you simply open up your digital photos in Adobe Photoshop. Then once you have done that you click on “image” up the top menu bar. Once the menu box has come up you then click on “adjust” and then “levels” and up comes the Histogram.

The Histogram will display the light values from the brightest part of your digital photo to the darkest parts. It displays this light & dark information in the form of a graph. It looks something you’d see on the stock market to measure the trends of stock over a certain period of time. You might see thin lines or a block of black shadow with peaks and troughs.

The right side of the reading of the Histogram represents the brighter colours. The left side represents the darker colours. You can pull the brightness down to create a more even light over the picture if you have several overexposed parts of your digital photo. Or alternatively if there are too many underexposed parts of your digital photo you can increase the brightness.
You can increase the brightness significantly by pulling the slider to the left. And you can do the opposite with the sliders to the right. By pulling the far left or far right slider, you’ll be increasing the contrast. By pulling the middle slider either side, you will have increased brightness or darkness but not so much contrast. You’ll see that this is an incredibly simple yet powerful post editing digital photography technique.

If you have a digital photo that is underexposed with the handy Histogram you can simply change the ‘luminance output levels’. As a result you’ll create a more evenly lit digital photo.

Happy shooting!
Amy Renfrey

High Dynamic Range In Digital Photography

If you have ever wanted to improve your digital photography then you may want to consider learning about High Dynamic Range. If you have heard of this term in digital photography, but are not sure what it is, then keep reading because it will serious change the way you look at your digital photography images. What High Dynamic range does in your digital photography is simultaneously lighten your underexposed areas and darken your overexposed areas. Working with your Dynamic Range will aim to create digital photography images as your own eye would see them; even light all over the scene.

In the digital photography world Dynamic Range simply refers to the range of light (luminance) vales from the darkest to brightest. In the real world is really the range of dark to bright sections of light that you can see with the naked eye. This is transferred to digital photography and it given the name Dynamic Range. Digital Photography Dynamic Range is the range of light on your digital camera sensor that can be captured without having the higher light or lower light values altered or edited. In digital photography speak High Dynamic Range simply means a higher range of light values.

You will notice that after understanding Dynamic Range that your digital photography can be improved dramatically and, very fast. Digital photography Dynamic range can improve aspects of your image such as adding a sense of drama to your cloudy landscapes, giving detail to lines of colour, toning down some overexposed parts of light sections of a digital image.

You may find that when photographing things outdoors in your digital photography such as landscapes, beach and snowscapes etc, you have a lot of contrasting highlights that slow your progress down. To overcome sections of high contrast you can use ND filters, a polariser, exposure bracketing, post editing in Photoshop etc, etc, the list goes on what you can do in digital photography but really, to get a more accurate exposure working with your Dynamic Range will be more effective.

You can get a good idea of digital photography Dynamic when you go outside and look at the light. For example High Dynamic Range is the bright sunlight on a typical outdoor, sunlit scene. In saying that, a Low Dynamic Range may correspond to darker areas such as a dimly lit room.

Let’s take my Sony digital camera to use as an example. It has 6 stops of Dynamic Range. The Dynamic range’s objectives are to capture more dynamic range. While it’s easy to capture daylight scenes with the Sony, in some instances like landscapes, more Dynamic Range might be needed. So in this case producing my High Dynamic Range requires that I take some separate exposures. Then I place all of the brightness levels that I want in my final image that my Sony’s sensor can record properly. What this means is putting the darkest values no lower than in the mid-range of the sensors light sensitivity range.

In the wonderful Adobe Photoshop I may decide to take a handful of exposures to cover the complete dynamic range. In each photo exposure I keep the aperture the same (changing aperture changes the depth of field). My aim here is to create different photos making sure that in each I cover the available brightness levels in the landscape.

I take a collection of photos of my landscape at about 1 stop changes in each photo. I don’t do this by altering the f stop I do this via my shutter speed. To check whether I’ve got variation in my exposures I can check the histogram to see whether I have adequately captured the scenes brightness.

Once I have all my exposures in the camera I go home and check it out in Adobe Photoshop. What I should be able to do then is edit them and create a picture as my own eye would see; good lighting on the foreground and good lighting on the background, without over exposure of the sky or underexposure of darker parts of the land.

Have fun and happy shooting!

Amy Renfrey

www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com

Picture ©A. Syed

Submit article | Digital Camera Resource

Digital Photography Multiple Exposures

Digital Photography is one of the most creative hobbies you can partake in. And sometimes we reach a stage of evolution in our digital photography whereby we want another challenge, or another way to express our creativity. And, undoubtedly, along your digital photography path, you'll come across a technique called "Multiple Exposures."

Multiple Exposures is a technique in digital photography whereby you can create a really ingenious effect. You can add colour, darken images, shade whiter areas, change shapes via light alterations etc. It’s really a fun digital photography technique and can give you much scope. For example in digital photography sometimes you will find that noise can interfere with picture quality and with this technique you can tone down the effect of noise.

An example of multiple exposures is taking two digital photography images and each of them to be exposed by one F stop. For example, let’s say that the first digital photos 'correct' exposure is F 16. You can take the first photo at F11 and the second one at F 8.

However not all digital cameras offer the ability to create multiple exposures. The digital cameras that can offer multiple exposures are dslr's such as Fujifilm FinePix S1 Pro and S2 Pro. Can you create multiple exposures without having more expense of a camera in your digital photography? Good news; the answer is yes.

This is where Photoshop comes in. By adjusting a few things in Photoshop, your digital photography images can become more and more interesting. In Photoshop you can actually create the most beautiful multiple exposures.

One of the first things to do to try this digital photography technique is to make sure you have the right exposure compensation. I won't go into complicated scientific jargon (light is pretty complicated at a base scientific technique) but what I will say is it’s a precision in digital photography metering that mastery is required. Instead of worrying about this in great detail, just know that in order to get the correct exposure value you may need to apply bracketing to your digital photography images. You can use your manual setting along with the meter to get some images that are a little darker than you would normally have, just for the purpose of this technique.

With multiple exposures it’s not necessary to keep every single photo you take. If you want to give an image more of a certain colour or brightness you can simply bracket accordingly. You can think of this as gaining momentum. You will find that after a while, you look at new eyes towards your digital photography.

Next week: How To Create Digital Photography Multiple Exposures In Photoshop

If you want to learn how to take sensational digital photography like the pro's do just go to www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com

Winter Colour And Digital Photography

Winter and colour in digital photography is one of the most beautiful aspects about digital photography. The light that winter offers us provides a great relief from the harsh, unforgiving sunlight causes hard shadows for our digital photography. We can loose detail and definition during the summer months whilst partaking in digital photography, and can be very disappointing.

One great thing about winter light and digital photography is that the scene you are working with often shows you colour that isn’t seen as easily in hard light. The way it works is that the filtered effect of winter light helps us see the other colours that otherwise get lost in the warmer summer months.

The soft pale greens and pastel yellows in a digital photography scene can become lost in the overexposed contract of the outdoor summer sun. With digital photography in winter, those pastel yellows and pale greens become soft shades of a bigger colour, providing a great opportunity to show themselves as a more true and real presence on your digital photo.

And don’t forget about black and white photography during winter. An already black and white scene can make tremendous black and white photos in digital photography. Black and whites of subjects that are already black and white prove to have more of a contrasting effect. If you take this effect with soft winter light you will often find that your black and white digital photos retain some dramatic qualities about them.

Just remember though, when you are metering for black and white during winter time on the auto setting, your camera will want to underexpose the black areas and overexpose the whites. Just find a medium shade of grey in your scene and meter off that, providing you with some mid ground for exposure. This will work from a focus point of view if you are shooting some distance away.

I hope you are thinking of winter now with a new perspective. It’s a beautiful time for light and the filtered effect can bring otherwise pale colours out into the open making them appear more colorful. Black and white photography during winter can also provide some dramatic images as well. Work with this beautiful light.

Amy Renfrey

www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com

Digital Photography During Winter

On many occasions during my time teaching digital photography I’ve had people say to me “oh, its winter, I can’t possibly take beautiful digital photos now.”

If you’ve said something like this about winter digital photography then just wait for this…

Did you know that digital photography during winter is one of the most fulfilling creative practices you can do? Digital photography is not just about summer; colour and bright sun shine….its much, much more than that. So here are some powerful digital photography tips for winter.

Firstly you can create some pretty sensational black and white digital photos during winter. If you live in a place that goes grey for the whole time winter is around, then consider this digital photography tip; maximise the absence of colour in your digital photography. You can create some very dramatic black and white digital photos of stormy skies, rain clouds; sheets of rain against darker objects making the rain look white in colour.

You can also try getting the most out of the blues, whites and blacks in your winter digital photography. Lets take for example a beautiful snow scene with a blue sky. You have all the softness of the gentle white snow blanketing your landscape or parkland. Along side this beautiful feeling you also have the stark black trunks of the trees, whether thick or thin. Then, to add to your digital photography experience, you may have the gentleness of an animal or the backdrop of a lake.

You see, what winter does for digital photography is feminise it. It takes away the masculine energy and replaces it with a quite, calm introverted feeling. Winter digital photography can offer you a soft light, which can provide beautifully filtered light in your daytime subjects.

When you partake in digital photography in the winter time the first thing you will notice is the light. Winter changes not only the physical temperature, but the temperature of light changes. There is less hard light and more bluish tones on your scene. It’s absolutely beautiful if, and only if, you maximise this to its full extent.

So just go and look. Look outside and notice how much beauty you see all around you. Look at the shades in your environment and see how much you can capture of this gentle bluish light.
It’s really divine.

The Awesome Power Of Lightening Combined With Digital Photography

Have you ever noticed that in digital photography there always seems to be photos of fork lightening that some clever photography enthusiast has mastered? The fact is that digital photography is a challenge and as soon as we develop the interest in digital photography we are challenging ourselves from the start. And a real challenge in digital photography is fast moving subjects. And when it comes to either traditional or digital photography catching electrifying fork lightening just is too much of a enticement to see if we can “win” the challenge.

So how do we apply our digital photography to sharp, brilliant streaks of colour over our images?

Getting great shots of forked lightening is not as difficult as you would think, or have been led to believe.

As a digital photography teacher I can honestly say that the first thing people do it buy way to much equipment for this exercise. You really just need a few simple things. A camera and a tripod are the main things.

The main challenge in digital photography when taking lightening shots is where to position yourself. I’ve had many a frustrating time, in the early days of my photography, trying to get the best angle, the best position only to find I had the camera pointed at completely the wrong part of the sky. And some of my digital photography lightening exposures were all wrong. I was thinking it was as hard as trying to predict a horse race with a crystal ball until I worked out the logic of it all and it started to become a lot of fun.

The first thing to keep in mind is to make sure your shutter is open. Lightening is sharp, short and sweet. Its important to get the most out of the long, open shutter speed by leaving it open for a long time. You can do this with confidence on a really black night such as being in the country on a dark night without any city lights or too many clouds around for the light to bounce off. In the country you may have the freedom to leave the shutter open for as long as 60 seconds.

However in the city it’s a bit different. What tends to happen is that due to other light in the atmosphere, light from buildings, streets and cars you can see this scene turns out much brighter on a 60 second shutter speed.

A quick way to get great lightening shots is to find a good place to set up where you know lightening is either happening or is about to happen. Take your tripod, camera and shutter release cable. The great thing about a shutter release cable is that once the lightening has struck there is no need to keep the shutter open and you can simply press it the shutter will close.

Try setting your aperture to about an f 8 or so and leaving the shutter open from anywhere between 10 seconds to 60 seconds. (Setting B). Set your IS0 at 100, set the focus to infinity and wait.

Digital Photography Safety

It’s a good idea, any time in digital photography, not to jeopardize your safety. Digital photography is intensely fun and incredibly educational and creative, but it’s not worth risking your life for. As much as it’s a beautiful spectacle, its much more wise to stay well away from lightening. It’s carrying enough energy to give your house power for two months solid, so be careful!

By Amy Renfrey

Picture copyrighted by James Stratton.

Digital Photography Tip: How To Photograph Christmas Lights

Christmas is coming and so is the urge for us who love digital photography to get out there in the burbs and photograph the beautiful Christmas lights. It’s a beautiful time of year and when you are as passionate about digital photography as I am, then this is the time you whip that digital camera out.

Taking photos of Christmas lights with your digital camera can be a very disappointing experience for digital photography enthusiasts. Pictures of Christmas lights in digital photography are aimed at being crystal clear with beautifully bold colours and hopefully we can capture the delicate glow that radiates from the lights themselves.

But…Christmas lights don’t always provide the ideal digital photography experience does it? J In fact, in digital photography, Christmas lights can turnout to be smudged dots of colour, like water over ink and way too dark. The first time I took a digital photography image of Christmas lights the flash went off accidentally causing a flattening out of my images not to mention the lovely colours disappearing and it ended up just being a digital photo of the neighbour’s front lawn. Not to mention how it set the dog off barking!

So just what is the digital photography secret to getting crystal clear shots of our suburban Christmas lights?

Okay now I’m going to share a secret with you. The best way to get suburb results of sharp, colourful Christmas lights is to choose the house you are going to photograph. Depending on where you live and how fast you can run, you may need to tee it up with your neighboughs first and offer them the photo. The same rules apply with your Christmas tree.

Take your tripod with you. Take your digital camera off “auto” and take it off “auto flash”.

Now try a method called bracketing. Set the aperture at a wide f stop, such as 2.8 or 3.5 for example. Then proceed to try some different settings. Set the shutter to 1/30 or higher. I’d recommend, if it’s really dark in the street something around the one second, two seconds or three seconds shutter speed.

There is a groovy little trick you can also do for helping you learning faster, about what works in digital photography and what doesn’t. That’s recording and documenting your digital photography experience. I usually take a note pad with me and write down the number photo and the f stop and shutter speed so when I look at the photos I know which digital photo has worked and what has not.

But in the dark it’s very hard to write down anything so you can do what I sued to do, and that is record on Mp3 what your settings you had on what photo. For example you can record yourself saying “picture one, f stop 2.8, shutter speed 2 seconds.” Then again as you have tried another setting “picture seven, f stop 22, shutter speed 1 minute.”

These are just examples but they really work. Don’t forget the basics with your night time photography such as wide aperture and slow shutter speed and the necessity of a tripod.

If you are in a moving vehicle for example and you are taking shots of Christmas lights from a bus or car, then you can always use the maximum aperture and a smaller shutter speed. For example f stop 1.4 and a shutter of 1/350 or higher.

And don’t forget if you do have the time to set up a tripod and try the bracketing technique (ideal) also remember if you have the shutter open for a while the light can bounce off other objects such as windows and roofs. If you get too much reflective light, simply reduce the time the shutter is open.

Good luck and may you have a beautiful Christmas!

Happy Shooting,

Amy Renfrey

Amy Renfrey is a digital photographer, teacher and author of “Digital Photography Success.” She’s sold tens of thousands of copies since the start of 2005 when she went online. Amy’s new book, soon to be released, titled “Advanced Digital Photography” to propel photography enthusiasts from amateur to semi professional level. Amy is known for her thorough and easy to read style, giving her readers challenges and expert advice to get their precious memories looking like picture perfect images. “Digital Photography Success” can be found at www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com

Photograph by Benjamin Earwicker.

Understanding Digital Photography White Balance

In digital photography terms, and traditional, you will most likely hear the term “white balance” quite a lot. It’s an important meaning because many digital photography enthusiasts concentrate on the lenses and digital camera without first learning about how light works.

In a nutshell, “white balance” in digital photography relates to the ‘temperature’ of light. If you notice when doing your digital photography indoors, the photo will have a bluish colour through out the digital photo. Then if you take your digital photography outside you will notice the photo then has a warmer tone to it. This is your white balance feature on your digital camera working to adjust the image.

To give you a direct example of how white balance works in your digital photography think of this; have you ever noticed how your colour pictures come out a more bluish tone in the shade? The problem is that because light has temperature, the camera has to analyze this change in its own limited way compared to the human eye.

You can help reduce the blue by altering the setting on the digtal camera, or, adding a warmer colur filter such as yellow. Some colour filters have different shades or hues of the same colour. Each warmer colour filter moves towards a warmer feel and increases in density.

Your white balance in digital photography also works when you walk into an office building. The fluorescent light might be different from that of the doctor’s or a drug store? Well, you’re not imagining things! The reason is there are over 40 different ranges of fluorescent lights and the problem for us digital photographers is that each one has its own colour temperature. It’s not to be avoided, please no! It just means you need to be aware that all florescent lighting is not the same and that you’ll have to consider this when shooting under this type of light.

You can work well with white balance by switching indoor shots to an “outdoor” setting to eliminate the bluish tone in indoor shots. And alternatively you can set the white balance mode to “indoor” when you are outside to reduce some golden/yellow saturation in your outside digital photography shots.

Best wishes,

Amy Renfrey

www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com

Why Digital Photography Matters

Being a passionate Prince fan since I was 13, I jumped at the chance to photograph his drummer, John Blackwell, at a drum clinic in Melbourne. I knew only too well Johns signature beats and ability to capture an audience with onew of this electrifying drum solos.

At the drum clinic John’s talent glowed from him like a beacon as he began to play. As I watched the keen drumming enthusiasts watching him in awe I saw something else. Emerging from the musician I saw the man. The man meditated into a deep state of concentration. I could see him connecting to a deep part of himself as the music entered his mind and soul. I took several photos of him so I could capture his meditation as his soul was swept away with this bliss.

So there I stood, feeling myself in awe of John. I felt in awe of his mediation and connection to something deep within him that resonated and manifested as a talented musician.

Amy Renfrey
www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com

How To Sharpen Your Digital Photography Images

One draw back that digital photography has is that the images don’t have the same sharpness as traditional photography has. But this needn’t be a problem because there is a very neat trick you can use in Photoshop to help sharpen your digital photography images.

Let’s start this digital photography lesson by looking at the digital camera. All digital cameras photograph images which have a normal pattern of pixels that make up this image. In some digital photography images a moiré effect is created. To avoid this, modern slr digital cameras come with an in built filter that givens a softer effect to the image.

When you are faced with having to sharpen a noisy digital photography image you’ll find that some photos are easier to sharpen than others. This might be caused from having a too higher ISO. The usual way of adding sharpness to a digital image has it problems too; it can actually increase the noise in your image quite a bit. To clarify this point, what is actually happening is the noise isn’t being increased as such, it’s being enhanced.

There is a way to sharpen noisy digital photo images without going into the noise itself.

To begin with its important to understand colour modes in Photoshop. The easiest way we remember colour modes is when we think of RGB mode. This is a “channel” of colours which are Red, Green and Blue. As I was taught by my good friend Lyndie Jeffry, there are more colour modes where your digital photo can be altered, adjusted and sharpened.

When I was first learning about digital photography Lyndie taught me that you can involve the CMYK mode which uses four colour channels. This stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. (Yes I know “Black doesn’t start with a “K”.)

Lyndie explained to me that the best one to use for this purpose is the L-A-B mode. LAB mode really just related to the 3 channels it uses. In a nutshell Lab stands for the individual channels. The “L” really means “luminance”, "A" the green-red aspect "B" the blue-yellow aspect. When working in LAB mode you can modify the brightness of your digital photo and keep the saturating and colours the same. The way this is possible is because practically no image information is depleted or lost when you convert to Lab mode. It also stays good when you convert back again, which is extremely handy. (Especially with highly valuable photos such as other peoples wedding photos.) Not everyone uses this, but it’s a neat trick with some digital images.

In some digital photography images you can simply choose to sharpen the L channel in LAB mode. By doing this much of the noise in the image is in the other channels that are usually not affected by this sharpening effect.

Now this may not work for every single noisy digital photography image you have. But in some situations it works very well. I suggest you try it to see the effect you give. I’ve used it a few times and it’s saved my ‘you-know-what’. So if you’re in a tight spot with a noisy image, give this a go, you might be surprised with the results!

By Amy Renfrey

How To Use Colour Effectively To Enhance Your Digital Photography

Digital photography has a lot of fantastic opportunities. When I say “opportunities” I mean artistic opportunities. You see succeeding in digital photography goes way beyond just knowing how to take a digital photograph in the technical sense. You see need artistic ability and knowledge too. Digital Photography, if applied artistically, can open up the doors of creativity for many, many years to come.

The first thing I recommend to start with if you are a serious digital photography enthusiast is to understand how colour works. When you understand how colour works in digital photography you can then use different colours to create very different feelings and emotions in the photo itself.

Colours such as blues, greens, mauves, etc are introverted colours and can often give your photo different feel to reds and yellows. For example think of a field of green with a tree that has purple flowers. It tends to represent, and even induce, feelings of tranquillity and calm. These, in digital photography, are regarded as introverted colours.

Colour such as yellows, red, oranges and pinks can often instil an energetic feeling. For example think of fruit such as red berries, oranges or cantaloupe. These are simple examples, but think of the feelings that these colours create in your digital photography.

This is another reason why not all things look as good in black and white, and why some things in fact do look better in black and white. (More about that another time. For now lets focus on creating colour that enhances your digital photography. )

In a very simple sense if you want to create a sense of stillness and calm in your digital photography then aim for subjects that have these colours. And the same goes the other way too. If you want to have a bright energetic feeling, then go for colours that are warm.

Contrasting colours in digital photography work very well too. Primary colours together such as blue and yellow seem to look great side by side, or one as a back ground and the other as a main subject. For example I took a photo on a beach with a bright yellow sign against a blue sky and a blue ocean. It gave the feeling of energy as well as having the calmness of the blue. Being a contrasting primary colour the yellow was not absorbed by the blue, it was the opposite. The yellow sat nicely against the blue as the focal subject.

When doing digital photography, think about the colours you are creating in your photo. Try to aim for digital photos that have colours that look good together, and do not clash like hot pink and bright red next to each other for example. If you want extrovert bold colour in your digital photo, don’t overcrowd the viewer with too many bold colours. In digital photography it works best if you have the main subject having the bold colour, rather than multiple points of bold colour in the background for example.

Choose good digital photography subjects with simple composition that have colours that work well to compliment each other. And remember digital photography is all about creating a feeling. And working your colours together well will enhance your digital photography images ten fold.

If you want to learn more about working with colour effective in digital photography, just go to www.digitalphotographysuccess.com

Best wishes,

Amy Renfrey